Hey Nobel peace prize committee, Canada isn't at war either

I’m pretty sure the Nobel peace prize committee just bought itself a regular spot on Saturday Night Live. How could it award a peace prize to Europe – yes, all of Europe — based on the fact that it’s not at war with itself, and not become a target of satire?

It’s true that Europe didn’t used to be a peaceful place. Starting roughly about the time someone invented the spear, one part of Europe has been trying to impose its will on other parts of Europe. Julius Caesar made his name by battering his way around Gaul, Hispania and Germania, forcibly introducing them to the benefits of Roman civilization. It’s hardly stopped since then. There’s been a French empire, Spanish empire, British empire, Austrian empire and a Holy Roman empire. Various popes spent much of the past two millennia dabbling in the fine arts of warfare, siding with one king or another based on how much loot might be hauled back to the Vatican. English kings measured themselves by how much of France they could seize before the French seized it back; Germany, in all its iterations, could never make up its mind between conquering the French, conquering the Poles, fighting the Russians or taking on the whole lot, all at one time. The only time no one was at war was when they were all too exhausted from being at war all the time.

Hitler seems to have solved that problem. The insanity of the war he provoked, and the cost it entailed for everyone involved, seems to have eliminated Europe’s taste for each other’s blood. Military technology has played a big part in that: when killing gets too easy and efficient on all sides, meaning the likelihood of invasion is that everyoneends up dead and the aggressor country ends up in ashes, the glory of trouncing the country next door loses some of its lustre. Besides, given the state of the European economy, it’s doubtful that any of the 17 European Union countries could afford to raise an army; if they wanted to, they’d probably have to borrow money from the European bank, which might be expected to say no, given the circumstances.

You could also argue that, while giving up the military option, Europeans have seized on a far more effective means of subduing one another: economic domination. The EU has spent the past several years establishing firm lines between the “have” states and the “have not” states. Greece is “have not” (and may be on the road to “have nothing”.) Spain and Ireland are “had but have not”. Italy is “should have a lot, but keeps electing morons”. And guess which is the big “have” country? Three guesses, and the capital is Berlin. Think the others haven’t noticed?

Today, the notion of Italy invading Spain, or the Dutch royal family seizing the British throne, is unimaginable. Austria, once one of the world’s great powers, is now a small Alpine nation that’s a threat to nobody. Obviously this is a good thing; being friends is better than being enemies. But is that reason to give it a peace prize? Canada has never started a war with anyone, anywhere, so where’s our prize? Switzerland washed its hands of war a century ago and remained neutral through both world wars. Costa Rica doesn’t even have an army. How about a peace prize for that?

This whole peace prize thing is getting weirder by the year anyway. In 2009 it went to Barack Obama, for reasons even Obama couldn’t explain. Since then his administration has been picking off terrorists with drones with gay abandon. In 2007 it went to
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, because why? Because alternative energy is peaceful? Because you can’t stoke a nuclear weapon with solar power? Beats me. You get the feeling the committee finds itself facing a deadline, can’t make a decision, and someone says, “The hell with it, let’s just pick a name out of the hat.” This year some scamp had scribbled “European Union” on a piece of paper and slipped it in with the others, and that’s the slip they drew.

Maybe it’s more complicated than that. But you wouldn’t know it from this year’s winner.